UPCOMING EVENTS

Have you ever wondered where hamsters got their name? Did you know that pink roses are used to express gentle emotions? These are some fun facts that Google wants to surface and hopefully provide you some knowledge for that “I didn’t know that!” moment.

Starting today, the search company will provide these interesting tidbits around living creatures, such as plants, animals, fruits, and vegetables. All you have to do is type your query and “fun facts” and it’ll show up at the top of the results page.

Above: Corgi fun facts as displayed in Google Search.

Image Credit: Screenshot

The fun facts are shown within the featured snippets section. Depending on the inquiry, you might also see additional questions that others have asked, such as the above search about corgis. In the screenshot, you’ll see that others have asked whether these dogs have a tail, bark a lot, the different types, and whether they shed.

Google didn’t provide much information about why it implemented fun facts, but it seems reasonable to assume that it serves to further the company’s mission of providing knowledge to the billions of people around the world. But it also add fuel to people’s inquisitive nature in that it could cause a drive to learn even more, resulting in additional searches, and likely more ad dollars for Google in the process.

It’s one thing to get right to the information you want, but it’s another to add some flair to the results. And while these fun facts are being added, they aren’t taking anything away from the normal search results you’d get. It seems that you have to add the phrase “fun facts” to your search query in order to get these trivia facts, because when I looked up just “corgi,” it displayed the default search page.